If your business is looking to grow its digital marketing footprint and really use the power of the Internet to generate business, it takes a lot more than just finding the leads to turn them into customers, even if you’ve got a great sales team. After all, the first time a lead hears of your business, they may not be at the point where they want to make a purchasing decision or they may want to do more research and get to know your business first. For these reasons, growth is about more than just generating leads through a B2B lead generation company – it’s also about educating, nurturing, and staying in touch during those early stages of your lead’s buying process.
Generating Leads
Finding good leads and qualifying them is the first step. Many marketing services bill themselves as B2B lead generation companies, believing that just getting the leads is the most important step. Finding and qualifying the leads is absolutely a big deal and there are a number of different strategies you can use, from trade shows to quality downloadable guides to pay-per-click advertising to generate those leads. Identifying and qualifying “ideal” leads is a process best done together with sales – they know best when it comes to identifying the leads that are ready to buy. Once the lead is identified as “sales qualified,” it can be turned over to your sales team to work.
Educating Leads
It’s rare that you find a lead that’s ready to buy, especially in a B2B setting where the sales cycle can be technically complex and months long. Instead, it’s time to educate leads and remarket to them in order to position your company as the main industry thought leader. In many industries, suppliers are already considered the experts by their buyers – it’s a natural leap for the suppliers to provide technical and compelling industry news. This can be done a number of different ways, but it requires creating high quality educational content that provides value. Figure out what common questions leads have before they reach you and as they interact with your sales team and then create content that addresses those questions in creative ways. You can then post this content on your website for an SEO boost, send the content out in email blasts, or use it to remarket and raise awareness.
Nurturing Leads
As you collect leads, you’ll notice that even leads who seem like ideal buyers – the right companies, the right markets, the right job titles – are not always reaching you at ready to make a buying decision. Some of these leads can turn into great future customers, but they need to be nurtured for a while. Your sales team can certainly reach out on a periodic basis and touch base, but having an email newsletter with compelling content or another marketing campaign that keeps your brand at the top of mind ensures that when they’re ready to make that decision, your company’s name comes up first.
To accomplish your marketing goals, there are a number of different highly effective online marketing strategies your business can use. It’s important to remember, however, that lead generation offers the best ROI when it’s done in an “inbound” way – understanding what makes a quality lead, and understanding how to educate and nurture those leads with valuable content and consistent outreach. Contact the team at StepUp Marketing for a customized B2B marketing strategy session to see how our system could work with your B2B company.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will go into effect on May 25, 2018 and will require all companies that collect personal data of EU citizens to take many new measures to protect that data. As an inbound marketing agency we believe that increased data protection is a great thing, and can help build the relationship of trust between company and client that we work hard to establish through creation of valuable content and other aspects of our work. We are working hard to achieve GDPR compliance in our marketing agency by May 25.
The GDPR requirements are demanding, so appropriate planning has been important. We’ve listed below the steps we are taking. While we are happy to share our own process, you should not take this information as advice for your company. It is essential that you consult with a knowledgeable legal authority to be certain of the specific steps you must take to be GDPR compliant.
Here are the steps we are taking at StepUp to be GDPR compliant:
1. Getting explicit consent before collecting information, and enabling easy withdrawal of consent
For us at StepUp, the data we collect is straightforward and not sensitive. However, the GDPR requires us to make sure that when we collect leads for mailing lists, consent is simple and clear. We are implementing “opt-in” consent on all our forms so that any person who interacts with us will understand what they are signing up for, and how they can withdraw consent through a simple and easy “unsubscribe” process.
2. Putting a process in place to make sure we can (if requested by a contact):
Confirm if and how any personal data is being used
Provide leads with their personal data
Transfer their personal data to another company
Erase and forget their data
3. Making sure we are ready in the event of a data breach
In our marketing activities, we don’t collect highly sensitive information such as financial or medical data, but we need to be ready to act in the event of a data breach anyway. GDPR requires organizations to notify their supervisory authority of data breaches within 72 hours of discovery of the breach. (For organizations which do collect sensitive data, such as medtech or fintech companies, it is also necessary to notify contacts directly in the event of a data breach.)
4. Putting policies in place to make sure data protection is a core function
We are reviewing internal policies and procedures to protect the data of our leads. For example, we work with HubSpot as a marketing automation platform, because we are aware that Hubspot’s platform is already conducive to the protection of the data of all the leads we collect and store.
5. Collecting only the personal data necessary to carry out the work at hand
Every time we create a new landing page, form or conversion point, we ask ourselves, what information do we really need from these leads? We aim to be thoughtful in the collection of data rather than gathering personal information “just because.”
6. Limiting access to personal data to the people who need it to carry out the work at hand
When we assign users within our marketing automation platform and CRM, we make sure that only the people involved in each project can see the contacts. HubSpot helps us set reasonable access parameters for each member of our team.
7. Appointing a Data Protection Officer [DPO] and a representative in the EU
Under the GDPR it’s not enough to make technical changes. It’s also essential to appoint a qualified professional to handle ongoing protection issues and to systematically carry out record-keeping and monitoring functions.
8. Have an informed IT lawyer on speed dial
We know that our own in-house research is not enough, so we have our lawyer involved as a central part of our GDPR compliance. Because the directives are new, and not clear in many places, and because their implementation depends on the specific position of each organization, we view access to competent legal counsel as the most important part of our GDPR compliance – and you may want to as well.
GDPR Compliance in Your Company
We hope that your company will benefit by knowing how we have approached the changes required by the GDPR. Make sure you outline a thorough plan in advance and run it by your lawyer. Ultimately, your leads and customers will appreciate your efforts to protect their data – both those that are required by GDPR and those imposed by other authorities. Compliance keeps you on the right side of the law, protects you from financial penalties and reinforces your company’s image as thorough and innovative.
At StepUp we work with a number of companies that collect varying levels of personal data, and it’s important to us that the information we collect on behalf of our clients is gathered lawfully and protected carefully. If you’d like to work with a marketing team that puts data protection at the center of your marketing plan, reach out to our team to schedule a free consultation and strategy session to learn how our inbound marketing methodology can help you grow your business.
Investing in any business is a risk that investors take when the potential ROI is evident in the new product or idea, and AgTech investors are no different. They want to make sound investments and so there are certain key aspects they’re going to look for in any AgTech startup to ensure the company has a chance of success and their capital is secure. However, in a highly technical field like AgTech, there are some unique aspects of early stage development that are key to building a successful plan and raising capital. If you are part of an AgTech startup or are an investor considering the industry, here are some important things to consider as you build your startup or weigh your potential investment.
Team
No matter the size of the startup, investors want to see that the company has the expertise it needs to accomplish its goals. Having founders or team members who are familiar with the industry and have the skills to develop the proposed solution is key. As the company grows, founders also want to see team members with management experience and sales abilities. A stable team is particularly important in a technical field like Agtech, where you may need to prove that you have an expert in agriculture as your CTO, an engineer as your COO, and a veteran entrepreneur as your CEO.
Rules & Regulations
Depending on the location of the startup and its product, it’s likely subject to a number of different rules and regulations. Agtech investors are looking to see that the startup has a clear understanding of the rules and any processes they need to undergo in order for their products to be approved for use in agriculture.
Early Adaptors
In a highly technical field like Agtech, it is easy to remain exclusively focused on product development and technical details. Even at the early stages, AgTech startups should focus on talking to farmers or other end consumers to get validation of their idea, and on building a community of early adaptors once the regulatory and technical challenges are overcome. Will it really help a large enough number of customers to make it a business? How much are those customers willing to pay? These questions should be answered initially through on-the-ground market research, and revisited periodically to ensure the startup is on the right track.
Think Big
While your company may initially start out focused on smaller co-ops or recreational farms, you need to have a vision for how your business will grow. There are a number of different routes to do this within AgTech. While focusing on a niche is a great way to get initial adoption, having a clear path for the future is a great way to get investors.
Resilience
Just as farmers want plants to stand up to hot sun or disease, investors want to put their capital in startups that will roll with whatever comes their way and keep going. Some investors look at serial successful founders for this trait, others like to see it demonstrated from the beginning through creative problem solving.
AgTech is a growing industry as more and more technology is developed or adapted for this major and important market. Investors are savvy enough to know that it takes more than just a knowledge of farming or technical expertise to succeed in the marketplace. That’s why having the right team and the right plan matters so much. Don’t make the mistake of leaving marketing out of your initial business strategy and waiting until your product is almost at market to figure out how to actually market it. At StepUp our focus is exclusively on helping B2B manufacturing companies, particularly in the fields of AgTech, MedTech and CleanTech, build smart marketing systems that save time and increase leads. If you want to learn more about marketing automation and strategy for AgTech companies, contact us today for a free B2B marketing strategy review.
For many businesses, sales and marketing are two separate departments with very different goals and outlook on how to achieve those goals. But businesses where sales and marketing work together to create a shared vision of success have a much higher chance of achieving it. It’s important to focus on sales and marketing alignment whether you have big in house sales and marketing teams or you are using an outside firm to handle your marketing. One way to do this is to sit down and create a sales and marketing alignment agreement where each side details their goals and the metrics they want to work towards. Here are a few reasons why this process can be powerful for any business.
Set Clear Marketing Goals
Marketing is generally charged with creating a brand look and feel, boosting brand awareness, and bringing leads into the sales funnel. It’s important that the sales team understand the full scope of what marketing is responsible for handling and what specific metrics they aim to reach, especially when it comes to the last responsibility of bringing in leads for the sales team. Here you can set goals as to the number of leads, the parameters used to qualify leads, and what happens to nurture leads that aren’t yet ready for the full sales press.
Set Clear Sales Goals
The sales department is responsible for following up on sales leads, preparing RFQs, and closing sales. They often rely on marketing to bring in leads and marketing, in turn, is relying on sales to close those leads. Sales metrics should allow the business to track the source of the different leads that close by value as well as volume. Sales should also communicate with marketing the types of questions customers are asking so that marketing can create relevant content.
Written Commitment to Concrete Goals
An agreement is exactly that, both parties sit down and agree what they will do. This can be a wonderful, collaborative process between the marketing and sales departments and should result in some concrete, measurable goals each side will work to reach. These goals can then be revisited throughout the business cycle to see how each department is faring.
Develop Regular Reporting and Tracking
Managing a growing business means being able to digest large amounts of information quickly. Once your sales and marketing teams have set specific goals, come up with a periodic reporting timeframe and report format so that you can see how they’re progressing towards their stated goals.
Celebrate Achievement
Once you’ve set clear metrics both sides can track and work towards obtaining, you can tell exactly how people in sales and marketing are performing. So when they hit their goal numbers, motivate their continued performance by taking a little time to celebrate their success.
Making the time to prepare sales and marketing alignment will pay off in the long run as both departments will know exactly what is expected from them. If you hire an outside firm like StepUp Marketing to handle your businesses marketing needs, then aligning goals is an important first step in bringing us up to speed on how your business operates. If you’re interested in learning more about how StepUp Marketing can help you build a powerful marketing system, contact us for a free consultation.
Much has been published about the use of social media for marketing campaigns, but for certain businesses, particularly those who work in the B2B space, LinkedIn might just be the most powerful social network. Running a marketing campaign on LinkedIn is different from running one on Facebook or Instagram because you’re targeting professionals based on their work interests and trying to present yourself as a thought leader rather than an aspirational figure. While there’s a lot to learn about LinkedIn campaigns, here are just a handful of tips to remember as you get set up.
#1 Choose a Clear Goal
Before starting any advertising campaign, it’s important to choose a clear goal for the campaign. If you’re pursuing LinkedIn, are you looking to raise awareness of your company, drive new recruits, or reach out to potential leads? Once you have your goal clearly defined, it’s easier to create an effective campaign as well as use the different metrics LinkedIn provides to track your success.
#2 Choose the Right Types of Ads
There are many different ways to reach people on LinkedIn. If you’ve built a following, you can share content directly to their wall. You can also sponsor content and have it appear on people’s feed based on various demographics you can control. However, if you’re targeting people who aren’t frequently checking LinkedIn, you can also send InMail, which acts as a personal connection between you and the person you’re reaching out to and goes to their email inbox.
#3 Deliver a Strong Message
Copy that is short, direct, and helpful is the best way to get and hold someone’s attention. The right images are important on LinkedIn, like any social network. But unlike other networks, real, meaningful content is what makes professionals stop and look. Think about your audience and what they might need and then write articles or messages that help them answer some of their questions. Even in a business to business marketing scenario, people are searching for answers to help them work smarter, faster, or more efficiently.
#4 Measure and Compare
As you run your LinkedIn campaign, take the time to look at the information you’re getting from your metrics and adjust your material accordingly. See if there are certain demographics that are responding to your content, if people are searching for certain key terms, or run an A/B test to see which version of a headline gets the most clicks.
#5 Maximize Your ROI
Knowing what the goals of your campaign are, you can track your effort and advertising spend against success on those goals to determine which parts of your campaign are working. There are many clever uses of LinkedIn for brand awareness, recruiting, and lead generation, so take the time to find the strategies that work best for your organization.
Implementing a LinkedIn campaign requires planning, quality content, and deliberate execution. StepUp Marketing has experience helping businesses handling their social media and online marketing, not just in LinkedIn, but on a variety of other platforms. We craft each unique marketing campaign to fit the needs of our clients and use metrics to be sure we’re delivering value. Reach out today to set up a free consultation and learn what the StepUp Marketing team can do to help your business.
Part of managing a sales team, especially at a growing or large company, is facilitating development of sales skills among team members. Katie Early and Kieran O’Flynn, Hubspot sales managers, recently shared a video within the Hubspot community in which they discussed their role in building a team with sales skills that translated to success.
Being a sales manager means you’re motivated to move the needle at your company in a big way, but you’re also focused on supporting the team members who work with you to make that possible. This means when it comes to training, you should pay attention to both what will improve the team as a whole and what will help your sales staff continue their professional growth. A good sales manager pays attention to each of these concerns and implements skills training options that address each one.
Internal or External Training?
Training can be accomplished both internally by a company trainer, sales manager, or other sales leader and externally by bringing in experts in the field or sending members of the team out into the community to get training. Sales leaders should have the ability and flexibility to mix the types and formats of the training their team receives to keep people engaged and reach those with different learning styles.
For example, sometimes having team members sit in a round table and discuss how they handled a particular aspect of the sales process is valuable because everyone gets an opportunity to share and learn from the others. In other cases, it helps to do simulated sales calls or one-on-one reviews to work with a specific team member on the skills they need to master. For the specific needs of certain team members, being able to send them to a training conference or executive classes at a community college can be helpful.
Training for Top Performers
It is important for sales managers to really get to know the individuals on their teams so that they can not only pinpoint what skills will help the most people, but how everyone likes to learn. Further, you should keep conversations open with your highest performing sales members to find out what kind of specialized training they need or would like to receive. Everyone wants to keep learning and growing, so you shouldn’t ignore the top performers just because they’re doing so well already. Sales teams often have high turnover after 2-3 years. A good sales manager is paying attention to everyone on their team, even the senior members, to make sure they feel like their careers are still moving in the right direction and that the company is invested in their success.
The other consideration for sales managers is how to make this training repeatable. After all, the odds are that if one salesperson needs this training, so will another. Can you replicate the curriculum you prepared by saving slides, taking a recording, or teaching others on the sales team to deliver the training?
If you’re wondering how your sales team can leverage digital data and inbound marketing information, download our guide on automating email followup. It’s packed with more tips for sales teams on customizing and automating lead followup to increase productivity and save time.
Originally published November 2017. Updated September 2026.
Most B2B companies have two funnels and do not know it.
Marketing runs one. It attracts visitors, collects form fills and scores contacts. Sales runs the other. It works a list, makes calls and books meetings. Each team reports its own numbers. As a result, each is convinced the other one is the problem.
A lead funnel only works when those two become one. This guide explains what a B2B lead funnel actually is, where inbound and outbound each belong, and how to connect them so interest turns into conversations instead of stalling somewhere in the handoff.
What is a lead funnel?
A lead funnel is the path a potential buyer takes from first becoming aware of you to becoming a sales conversation. It is called a funnel because many people enter at the top and fewer move through each stage.
In B2B, the funnel has a few features that consumer funnels do not:
Several people buy together. A single decision can involve a finance lead, an operations head and a technical evaluator, each moving at their own pace.
The cycle is long. Months, sometimes more than a year.
Most of the research happens without you. Buyers read, compare and ask peers long before they speak to a salesperson.
So a B2B lead funnel is less a straight line and more a set of stages that different people move through at different times. Still, the stages are useful, because they tell you what each person needs next.
The stages of a B2B lead funnel
Stage
What the buyer is doing
What they need from you
Awareness
Noticing a problem, or noticing you
A clear point of view on the problem
Interest
Reading, comparing, asking around
Useful content that helps them think
Consideration
Building a shortlist
Proof: examples, clear offers, answers to hard questions
Conversation
Talking to vendors
A salesperson who already understands their situation
Decision
Getting internal agreement
Material that helps them make the case to others
Different teams name these stages differently. The names matter less than agreeing on them, and on what moves someone from one stage to the next.
Inbound and outbound: two ways into the funnel
Inbound
Inbound brings buyers to you. They find an article through search, see a post on LinkedIn, hear a colleague mention you, or download a guide. They arrive with a need already forming.
Inbound is strong at the top and middle of the funnel, because it builds familiarity and trust over time, and it tends to attract people who are already looking. Its weakness, however, is timing. It works on the buyer’s schedule, not yours, and it can take months to build.
Outbound goes to buyers. Your team identifies the right companies and people, then reaches out directly: email, phone, LinkedIn, events.
Outbound is strong when you know exactly who you want to reach and cannot wait for them to find you. In addition, it gives you control over timing and focus. However, cold outreach without context is getting harder. Buyers are flooded with generic sequences, and most of them get ignored.
Why you need both
Inbound without outbound tends to attract some people who are not a fit and miss some who are. Outbound without inbound tends to reach the right people with no reason for them to listen.
Together, they cover each other’s gaps. Inbound creates familiarity, so outbound lands warmer. Outbound focuses attention on the accounts that matter most, so inbound content gets read by the right people.
How to connect inbound and outbound in one funnel
The idea is simple. The execution is where most teams struggle, so here is how to make it concrete.
1. Agree on who the funnel is for
First, both teams need the same customer profile, in writing. Which companies, which roles and what problem. If marketing is attracting one kind of buyer and sales is calling another, no process will fix the gap. Our guide on how to create an ideal customer profile walks through building one.
2. Use inbound signals to guide outbound
When someone from a target account reads three articles about a specific problem, that is a signal. Rather than waiting for a form fill, sales can reach out with context: “A few people on your team have been reading about this. Is it something you are working on?”
This is where inbound and outbound genuinely meet. Marketing surfaces interest. Sales responds to it quickly and personally.
3. Make outbound point to inbound
Similarly, outbound messages should rarely end with “book a demo.” A better first touch offers something useful: an article that answers a question the buyer probably has, or a short guide. That gives the buyer a low-pressure way to engage and brings them into the part of the funnel marketing nurtures.
4. Define the handoff
Decide exactly when a contact moves from marketing’s care to sales. What behavior or information qualifies them? How fast must sales follow up? What happens if sales decides the contact is not ready? Our guide on converting MQLs to SQLs covers this handoff in detail.
5. Close the loop
Finally, sales should tell marketing what happened to every contact it received. Which ones became conversations, which went quiet and why. Without that feedback, marketing keeps optimizing for volume instead of quality.
Where the phone still fits
Speed matters more than most teams admit. When a qualified buyer shows interest, a prompt, personal response, often a phone call or a short personal message, turns interest into a conversation far more reliably than an automated email sequence.
The call is not a pitch. Instead, it is a question: what prompted your interest, and what are you trying to solve? Listening well on that first call does more to move the funnel than any clever sequence.
How to measure a lead funnel
Resist measuring each team on its own numbers alone. Marketing reporting form fills and sales reporting meetings creates two funnels again.
Instead, track a small set of shared measures:
Conversion between stages, so you can see where people stall.
Time between stages, especially from first interest to first conversation.
Source of conversations, including self-reported sources like “a colleague recommended you.”
Quality feedback from sales, meaning how many handed-over contacts were genuinely a fit.
Together, these show where the funnel leaks. In most B2B companies, the biggest leak is in the handoff, where interested buyers wait too long or get a generic response.
Common lead funnel mistakes
Treating the funnel as marketing’s job. The funnel belongs to both teams. When sales treats it as marketing’s problem, the handoff breaks.
Chasing volume at the top. More contacts are not better if they do not match the customer profile. They just create work.
Slow follow-up. Interest fades quickly. A day’s delay costs more conversations than most teams realize.
Automating the first real conversation. Automation is useful for organizing and nurturing. However, the moment a buyer is ready to talk, a person should respond.
No agreed definitions. If the teams disagree on what a qualified contact is, every meeting about the funnel becomes an argument about numbers.
Frequently asked questions
What is a lead funnel?
A lead funnel is the path a potential buyer takes from first becoming aware of your company to becoming a sales conversation. It is usually divided into stages, such as awareness, interest, consideration and conversation, with fewer people moving through each stage.
What is a B2B lead funnel?
A B2B lead funnel is a lead funnel designed for business buying, where several people are involved in each decision, the cycle is long and most research happens before a buyer speaks to sales. It needs to serve multiple people at different stages at the same time.
What is the difference between inbound and outbound marketing?
Inbound attracts buyers to you through content, search, social media and referrals. Outbound reaches out to buyers directly through email, phone, LinkedIn or events. Inbound works on the buyer’s timing. Outbound gives you control over who you reach and when.
Can inbound and outbound marketing work together?
Yes, and they work best together. Inbound creates familiarity, so outbound outreach lands warmer. Outbound focuses attention on the right accounts, so inbound content reaches the people who matter. The connection point is a shared customer profile and a clear handoff.
What are the stages of a lead funnel?
Common stages are awareness, interest, consideration, conversation and decision. The exact names vary by company. What matters is that marketing and sales agree on them and on what moves a buyer from one stage to the next.
How do you improve a B2B lead funnel?
Start with a shared customer profile, agree on the handoff between marketing and sales, respond quickly and personally when a qualified buyer shows interest, and track conversion and time between stages. In most companies, the handoff is where the biggest gains are.
So next quarter, give both teams one report with one set of numbers.
Then see how long it takes someone to ask where the webinar leads went.
Why should you spend time planning and writing a sales email? Because when done right, it absolutely works to drive traffic to your business. A recent talk by Heather Morgan from SalesFolk highlighted ways to create the best sales emails for your business.
There are many reasons to consider reaching out to prospects via email. First, marketing has changed significantly in the last decade. There is more competition in all industries and it is no longer enough just to shout “I am here!” and wait for the work to appear. Telemarketing and cold calls are hard and not as effective. You need to adapt your approach to continue to gain new customers and projects.
Inbound marketing is the new way to attract and educate qualified leads, but building quality content takes time. You also have to spread this content over multiple channels such as email marketing, Facebook, and LinkedIn to attract leads to your website.
If done right, sales emails can be very an effective way to attract, educate, and retain clients. Here are five principles to follow to create an effective sales email:
Know Your Audience
Are you writing to the CEO? Then your email should address concerns most CEOs have such as cutting costs and boosting sales. Writing to the engineers? Then talk about tolerance, maintenance costs, or customization options. Spend some time looking at the web profiles of the company and individuals you’re targeting. You’ll be able to learn what they’re reading about and where their interests are. You can also see what thought leaders and industry influencers they follow. From this information, you can understand what their concerns are and how they’re making decisions. All this information can help you draft a better sales email.
Get a Reaction
People react to an email for three reasons:
Curiosity: Humans are, by nature, curious about things they aren’t familiar with. Use curiosity to get people to open your emails by employing leading questions as your subject line.
Desire: When you can paint a compelling picture of how you’re going to solve a problem and improve their situation, clients are quickly motivated to take action.
Fear: This is when you talk about situations people want to avoid. You can target their problems and pain points. Just be careful that your email is designed to motivate quick action and not make them give up.
Call on existing customers to brag about your company. When it’s someone else exclaiming your virtues, prospects are more likely to take note. Ask your current clients to share a story about how you’ve helped them succeed. Get them to describe what it’s like working with you. Share a picture of your client or their name so that they are relatable.
Have a Clear Goal for Your Email
It is important to be specific about the goal of your email. Do you want the prospect to call you? Fill out a form? If you know what your goal is, you can craft your entire email towards the one simple action you want the prospect to take.
Collect Data
Be a data fanatic. Set goals for your sales campaigns and measure your results. Modern email marketing tools come equipped with email testing capabilities, advanced reporting, and lots of specific insight into what’s happening with each email.
Many people are afraid of cold emailing, but success really depends on your state of mind. If you have a great product or service that can truly help the people you’re contacting, then it is your obligation to sell it.
Now you know you need to send sales emails – but what to write? Check out our free guide of proven follow up sales email templates for ideas of emails to use throughout the sales process, and for every kind of lead. Templates can help you semi-automate your follow up process, save time, and reach more of the leads you want. When you use the right tools, the right leads will come your way.
Every business has a specific customer they’re looking for – preferably one who can afford their services and is ready to make a purchasing decision. For B2C companies, this customer might be clear to everyone. But for B2B companies and in particular industrial companies, often only the owner of the business inherently understands the profile of their ideal customer. Communicating this to sales and marketing teams, and making sure that you are converting the right leads, is a challenge.
Inbound marketing is a marketing methodology that addresses this issue. In contrast to traditional marketing or even digital marketing, inbound marketing involves creating a system that starts with understanding the ideal customer. This understanding then guides an entire process of communication. Here are three key steps you can follow to start building an inbound system:
1. Create a Clear Buyer Persona
Take the time to sit down and draft a persona for your ideal customer. What role do they hold within their organization? How educated are they about your industry? What specific needs do they have that your company can fill? Is there a certain size or type of order they might need? For businesses marketing to other businesses, this means that your buyer is generally someone in management or procurement at another business. They’re generally well educated and have done at least some basic research about your industry. Define exactly who this person is so that sales and marketing are reaching people who can make decisions, have projects your business can complete, and are focusing on converting the right leads.
2. Ensure Marketing and Sales Alignment
Particularly when businesses focus heavily on a professional sales team, marketing may get less focus. However, marketing still plays an important role in making sure the message is consistent and that potential leads are aware of the brand. Regular communication between marketing and sales personnel will ensure that marketing isn’t over-promising the company’s capabilities and the sales team is presenting a consistent, professional image.
3. Create a Clear Sales Funnel
In a manufacturing company, there is a clear process required for each task within the manufacturing process. In the same way, creating a sales funnel where a prospect goes from a stranger to a customer makes sure you’re capturing the information you need to make informed marketing decisions. It also ensures you can properly analyze every lead that comes your way, focusing on converting the right leads that will become customers. Start with a clear process to document and track leads and move them from someone who is just learning about your business into a prospective customer. Your sales team should also have a clear process to follow for approving and sending out request for quotes and handling changes requested by customers. Even a simple process can be useful to make sure you don’t miss any details and, if set up correctly, can scale as your company grows.
Handling the marketing aspects of a growing business may seem like you have to learn a completely new, and highly technical, subject. That’s why collaborating with an outside marketing firm that specializes in B2B sales such as StepUp Marketing is helpful. While you’ll still have to articulate clearly who your buyer is, they have the technical expertise to set up the marketing processes that feed directly into your sales funnel.
In the past, blogs were considered a rarity within the business world – very niche specific, without much value. Now, this is no longer true – blogging for business has evolved to be the main staple in most business marketing strategies and more specifically, within any inbound marketing strategy.
While blogging can take some time and may even seem slightly daunting, the advantages of having a blog for your business are numerous and hard to ignore.
Business Blogging Defined
First, it’s important to note that business blogging looks different than other forms of blogging. Perhaps you choose to blog in your free time, or maybe you’re a frequent reader of travel blogs, that’s all great. But with business blogs, you must keep in mind that its main purpose is to be part of a strategic marketing plan.
The length of posts can range drastically, yet what’s important is that you treat the blog as a part of your company’s website, and keep the subject of posts relevant to what you are selling or providing.
The goal of the blog should be to increase online visibility, whether that is through SEO or social media. Use your company’s expertise to share insights of real value with potential customers. Ensure that posts are speaking to your client’s challenges, holding their interest and proving to them that you are established within your specific industry. Showing them the value that your company has to offer simultaneously promotes your service or product, prompting traffic to be converted into leads.
Why Blog?
In 2017, a blog for your business has more to offer than ever before. The overhead is low, and the benefits are high. Consider this:
Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links
82% of consumers enjoy reading relevant content from brands
Websites with a blog have 434% more indexed pages
77% of internet users admit to using blogs
Here are five best reasons why we believe blogging for your business is a must:
#1. Business Blogging Drives Traffic
This was briefly mentioned above but is important enough to really dig into. Specifically, with Inbound Marketing, driving traffic (instead of being annoying/distracting) truly is key.
Make sure to view your blog as an extension of your website. Hopefully, your website has been kept simple and doesn’t have a lot of pages, yet most likely isn’t updated as frequently as a blog would be updated. Which is perfectly fine, because blog posts are basically just indexed pages on your website.
A statistic from Hubspot notes that 78% of internet users are turning to the internet to do their product research. With frequent blog posts addressing the concerns of your potential consumers, the odds of them stumbling upon those indexed pages are high.
With every blog that you write and post, you are increasing your chances of:
Showing up in search engines (driving traffic)
Increasing your social media presence with your current audience/followers
Expanding the potential of being discovered via social media by new potential leads
Think of it this way – with each blog post you are publishing, you are increasing the odds that your audience will be sharing and re-sharing this post to others. It’s a simple way to build on free marketing, while also building credibility.
All the above examples are working towards your end goal of driving more traffic, resulting in more potential leads. Which brings us to our second reason.
#2. Blogging & Building Leads
In short, having a blog for your business is going to generate more leads, it’s as simple as that. The traffic that we mentioned above, some of it is looking specifically for your product or service, and therefore are well-positioned to be converted into leads once discovering your blog. When it comes to converting those leads, the use of ‘call to action’ opportunities within the blog are crucial.
Blogs are a GREAT opportunity to utilize CTA’s. Some simple CTA’s to consider adding to blog posts can range from free fact sheets, webinars, training, even an e-book; any simple value-add that encourages a visitor to exchange their contact information. Without a CTA, it may be little more challenging to ensure that you’re turning blog traffic into leads.
Part of turning your traffic into leads is also developing that relationship. The language or tone that your blog uses may help to connect more with your audience than your actual website does. When writing posts, consider asking questions towards the end to promote comments from your readers; which also will give you a view into the kind of traffic you are seeing come through your blog, and what kind of solutions they may be seeking out.
Along with building relationships with your traffic and/or potential leads comes the perk of also building trust. Or in other words, credibility.
#3. Creating Credibility
Stemming directly from the concept of building relationships through your blog now comes the concept of establishing yourself as a credible source of information to your audience; one of authority. The more that you are able to interact with your prospects and answer their questions, the more quickly you can build up that authority.
Perhaps there is confusion around a certain issue, or a visitor is unsure of how to solve a particular problem. If an existing blog post of yours is able to answer a question or solve that problem, you’re able to quickly (and easily) build up that credibility with a visitor, simultaneously increasing the chances of turning them into a lead.
It makes sense; if you’re able to organically utilize a blog to answer questions, the chances of your audience then trusting you and being willing to enter the sales process will be much higher than without. Not to mention the fact that your leads are coming to you more educated because of that blog, which may enable them to actually move through the sales process more quickly than those being established from ground zero.
At the end of the day, you should be striving to create a blog that establishes yourself as the “go-to” resource when it comes to your industry. Provide educational, easy-to-digest knowledge for your blog traffic, and you will build leads that trust you – leading to higher customer conversion rates. It’s as simple as that.
#4. Connecting With Clients
A business blog is also a great tool to genuinely connect with your customers, and communicate with one another. Focus on posting content that addresses issues or pain points that they have (and that you can solve), or use posts to further explore areas that may also be of interest to your audience.
It can be a great resource to test new ideas and thoughts on different solutions or products, by posting and then seeing how your audience directly responds. Using the “comment” feature at the bottom of a blog post is a must; end posts by encouraging your readers to respond to it with their thoughts or questions, and then use that direct feedback as some navigation as your business continues to move forward.
Perhaps your readers are choosing to reach out and comment on challenges that you had never even considered before. Just like the use of social media, blogs can be a great opportunity to then use that information that is freely given to you, and explore ideas within your own business, so that you can possibly offer solutions around those pain points being voiced while growing your business over time.
#5. In it for the Long-Haul
The last thing to consider when it comes to blogging for your business is that blog posts can help grow your business, forever. If you are writing relevant content for your readers to absorb and utilize, your blog posts will continue to bring traffic to your website for years to come.
Think about it. Once you share a new blog post, the hope is that it gets shared, reshared, read through emails being sent out, social media, and so on. This helps your blog to get ranked in search engines and then sets you up to be found in the future – for the weeks and months to come.
So essentially we are suggesting that a blog is not only a short-term but a long-term investment. As long as posts contain a value, they will continue to offer value as long as they continue to exist out there on the world wide web. Be patient, don’t always expect immediate results, and trust that traffic (and leads) will continue to flow in from your blog, over time.
Hubspot – our marketing platform – actually reported that 70% of their blog traffic per month actually comes from posts that weren’t even published during that month. The traffic came from old posts. Old posts, with great value.
It’s Time to Blog for Your Business
When it comes to building your business, blogging can be an extremely relevant, helpful tool, without having to put excessive amounts of time and effort into it. And the best part is, if you don’t know where to start, there are plenty of resources out there to help you launch your business blog and get it underway.
Questions? Comments? Want some help with starting a blog – or your entire marketing campaign? Get in touch with us today!
